


race for a hurricane

by purplefennels7



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: During Canon, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, M/M, Movie: SPECTRE (2015), the inherent emotional symbolism of titles and names, the whole admin squad is there too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 20:36:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29640339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplefennels7/pseuds/purplefennels7
Summary: It strikes Tanner then, that Mallory's acting like nothing’s changed. Like he’d expected Tanner to stay all along. From someone else it might’ve been patronizing, but this is Mallory, and Tanner’s his chief of staff, and everything has changed but nothing has changed either. He’s exactly where he’s supposed to be, now when the storm is upon them.or: m-branch isn't going quietly, but carrying on isn't as easy as it looks.
Relationships: M | Gareth Mallory/Bill Tanner
Comments: 3
Kudos: 18





	race for a hurricane

**Author's Note:**

> i rewatched spectre, heard the "with any luck, we leave something behind" line in mallory's goodbye speech, and promptly lost my mind. this is the result. welcome to rarepair nation, i really do think about them every minute that i'm alive. hope you enjoy!!

“Sir?” Tanner asks as M comes storming out of the conference room less than five minutes after he’d gone in, face like a thundercloud and Eve hurrying along in his wake.

“C’s shutting us down,” he snaps, and Tanner falters as he falls in beside him. “The double-oh section is gone. Nine Eyes goes live tonight.”

“They haven’t even consulted us,” Tanner says, feeling outraged and unbalanced in turns even though he’s sort of known this would be coming since that first vote.

“They didn’t have to.” M’s voice is practically sepulchral, death knell before the grave, and it settles deep into Tanner’s chest and tugs him open where he stands. “Put us in for a noon-thirty in the lobby? I have to give an address.”

“Sir-” _Gareth-_

M fixes him with a look that could scorch right through the mahogany wall panelling, and Tanner ducks his head. “Yes, sir.”

M disappears immediately into his office as soon as they reach the top floor, the door thudding sharply shut in Tanner and Eve's faces as they try to follow him in. At five minutes past twelve the door to the antechamber swings open and admits Q, tapping away at his ubiquitous mobile but otherwise empty-handed. He takes one look at Eve and Tanner, huddled together at Eve’s desk and watching M’s door like it might explode, and promptly detours to perch on the edge of the desk instead of one of the visitor chairs.

“Why’re you two here?” he asks, punching in a last command and pocketing the phone.

“Nowhere else to go,” Tanner answers. “I might ask you the same?”

“I don’t know. M called me in without an agenda.” They exchange looks, but any further conversation is stymied as M’s door finally swings open.

“Ah, good, you’re all here. Come in,” he says, voice even. But Tanner can see the lines pinched tight at the corner of his eyes, the hands clenched just a tad too tight at his sides, and stifling worry burns up his throat as he steps into the office, taking a seat in one of the trio of chairs already across M’s desk. M shuts the door with a finality that belies the moment, and comes around the desk to sit heavily into his chair. “You know, of course, about the final disbanding of the double-oh section and the dissolution of this branch.”

They each nod yes in turn, slow and reluctant. Eve’s fingers are clenching and unclenching in the fabric of her skirt, and Q reaches out a hand to still hers.

“I want you to know,” M says, fixing each of them with a steely gaze, “that none of you are obligated to depart when I do. There will always be a place for you at MI6, even if there is not one for me.”

Tanner doesn’t think he’s imagining M’s gaze lingering longer on him, and he’s shaking his head even before the last words have left his mouth.

“With all due respect, sir, a MI6 under C is not a MI6 I’d deign to work with,” he says. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Q nodding his agreement. He’s not surprised by this - it’s not loyalty to this M, not in so many words, but refusal to work with C, and he knows very well why. C’s plans for Nine Eyes, for the merger, run antithetical to everything Q is. His is the scalpel, the human touch on the electronic knife, and C is a sledgehammer on the trigger of a bomb and he’ll take Q’s life’s work and tear it to the ground.

Eve isn’t quite nodding, no, but there’s an uncertain angle to her shoulders and that’s as much a tell as any. Mallory has always been her M, and Tanner knows she’s loyal to a fault until someone leads her astray.

And Tanner, well, he thinks that one is self-explanatory.

“Well,” M says, and there’s surprise in the colour of his tone, and pride, maybe, just a touch. “I suppose our C will be rather peeved to find himself deprived of secretary, chief of staff, and quartermaster in one fell swoop.”

“Then he should’ve thought further than to deprive them of their M.” By the looks he gets Tanner knows he’s toeing the line right now, the separation they usually keep clear as crystal, but these are extenuating circumstances, and the edge of Mallory’s mouth is twitching upwards and he needs that solace right now.

Maybe this is the weakness of being office-bound, on home turf at all times. Agents know how to switch handlers, know how to trust even being shunted from comm line to comm line. In the end, the three of them are employees of MI6, no matter that M is head, and they have no official loyalty right to him. That isn’t true, of course, but they should carry on in the same way they’d carried on after Mansfield's death.

But it’s different, too, this. Mansfield to Mallory had been a shift, come far too soon but inevitable, and Tanner had known somehow, even since the beginning, that he’d not lead them astray. Mallory to Denbigh, in comparison, is a hurricane. Uprooting the foundations, the old guard tradition, out with the old in with the new but cranked up to eleven.

The clock in M’s office chimes the quarter hour. Eve and Q exchange a weighted glance, and get to their feet in a single fluid movement.

“We'll rally the troops,” Eve says. Her words float in the air, feathers in the wind and in an instant a silent, secret understanding passes between the four of them. They’re not going to go quietly, oh no. They’re not leaving their agents out in the cold, not while they still draw breath. Twelve hours to save the world, again, and this time they don’t have the power of British intelligence behind them but if they can’t manage it, no one can - and so they must.

And then Eve and Q are gone, and it’s just Tanner and M there with the big desk and a world of distance between them.

“Do you know what you’re saying?” he asks, the words too loud for the heavy quiet. M lifts his head from where he’s staring down at the desk, meeting Tanner’s eyes head-on, and he’s always been steady as foundations but there’s always been a hint of a smile crinkling at the corners of his eyes; sardonic when he’s cursing Bond out, satisfied at the end of a successful mission, and Tanner’s noticed it since the beginning. Loved it even longer.

But there’s none of that, now. M is iron, and nothing else.

“It’s nothing new. They just need to hear it from me.” Tanner nods.

“Sir.”

One minute drags by, and then another, and Tanner has to break the eye contact, can’t look at the shuttered expression on M’s face any longer. He looks down at his hands folded in his lap and feels like he’s scrabbling for purchase, clinging to a quickly vanishing _something_ and he doesn’t know if that’s Six or Mallory but it’s fading fast.

“It’s time to go,” he says, when the clock hits five til. M gives a single sharp nod.

“So it is.”

He seems to steel himself, shoulders pulling back, back straightening, and when he stands and tugs his suit jacket into place he looks unbreakable and unshakeable and like everything Tanner associates with Six, and he’s always known the two were inseparable.

“Let me,” Tanner says, as M starts to unravel and re-knot his tie. He gets a piercing look, but M doesn’t stop him as he comes around the desk and takes the silk in both of his hands, smoothing over the embroidered ridges and then tying it together in the half-Windsor he prefers. He’s done this a million times, a million mornings, still half-asleep in the dim light of their bedroom with Gareth leaning warm against him but this is worlds away from that.

“Thank you,” M says quietly as Tanner settles the knot against his throat, sliding the tie pin into place. He wants to reach out, wants to touch, wants to find Gareth among the bones of M but he can’t. Not now.

So he steps back, curls his fingers against the fabric of his trousers and holds his tongue, and falls into step as M sweeps past him for the door. He stops just inside of it, hand on the knob, and turns to look at Tanner and it feels like he’s trying to stare right through him.

_What do you need?_ is on the tip of his tongue but somehow it won’t fall, won’t break the weight of the silence nearly pushing them out the door.

M swallows hard, holding his gaze.

“Once more, into the breach,” he says finally, and something clenches tight at Tanner’s chest.

“After you, sir.”

* * *

_With any luck, we leave something behind._ M’s words echo through Tanner’s head as they trace the familiar path up to M-branch. The elevator doors open to a branch at a bare tick-over, and even though the carpet muffles their footsteps Tanner can imagine an echo off the empty walls.

Mallory holds the door open for him, shoulders high with tension and mouth pinched in a tight line, and they’re probably not even allowed back up here now that they don’t work for Six anymore but Tanner would like to see anyone try to stop them.

Mallory goes around his desk and swings the big leather chair away, and then stops. _Sir-_ catches in Tanner’s throat as he watches him stare down at it like he’s seeing it for the first time, something terrifyingly vulnerable in the cast of his face.

Olivia Mansfield had left behind three things, at her death. An ugly ceramic bulldog, a flash drive, and her office chair. Two of those things sit somewhere in James Bond's apartment. The third looms large before them, the ghost of the late M herself brought corporeal.

It’s like stop motion, when Tanner remembers it later. Mallory crumples down into the chair like his strings have been cut, and Tanner’s there without quite knowing how he’d moved, and they’re frozen there, Mallory’s shoulders trembling, so minutely it’s barely noticeable, and Tanner’s hand is stinging where Mallory’s slapped it away and he can’t remember the last time he’d seen him like this.

“Mallory,” he says. Pleads, maybe. “Gareth-” and Mallory looks up, eyes hollow pools.

“Bill.” And then he’s holding Tanner’s hands hard enough to bruise, skin cold as ice, and Tanner’s nearly collapsing down on the carpet in front of him and it takes only a moment of hesitation for Mallory to drop his forehead to his shoulder. Tanner pulls him in without a single thought for propriety, feeling him shake against his chest and it’s an apology and a plea all at once.

He knows how to do this, he thinks, almost desperately as he winds his hands into the fabric of Mallory's shirt and holds on. He knows how to be Mallory’s rock, knows exactly the curve of Mallory’s spine when he shakes, worn-out and wrung to shreds, every night after _agent down_ echoes over the comms, knows the heart behind the mantle of M and Mallory is ruthless and dangerous in every way that counts but he is so very human too, on the rare occasions that he gets to be.

“Bloody stupid,” Mallory mutters, half into Tanner’s shirt, and Tanner pretends he can’t hear the way his voice wavers. “She’d gut me herself if she could see me now.”

“Oh, all of us,” Tanner agrees easily, tracing the path of Mallory's shoulder blade up to massage across his bad shoulder. “But here we are.”

Mallory sighs out a breath, and when he finally raises his head to meet Tanner’s eyes, he looks empty and exhausted and Tanner’s reaching out before he can think better of it. He half expects Mallory to slap him away again, but when his hand settles onto Mallory's cheek he leans into it with the ghost of a sigh, eyes sliding briefly shut.

In a minute they’re going to get up and they’re going to carry on; Denbigh or no, they have agents in the wind who need someone watching their backs. M is MI6’s fixed point, and he isn’t allowed to waver. But right now this is Mallory, here in Tanner’s arms and they’re both going to need this, this comfort, to make it through the night.

“Do your access codes still work?” Mallory asks quietly, utterly at odds with how he turns his head to press a kiss into the valley of Tanner’s palm. Tanner raises an eyebrow, trying not to shudder at Mallory's mouth on his skin.

“I haven’t checked since - why?”

“C will surely have overridden mine, but yours might have escaped.” It strikes Tanner then, that Mallory's acting like nothing’s changed. Like he’d expected Tanner to stay all along. It would’ve been patronizing from anyone else but this is Mallory, and Tanner’s his chief of staff, and everything has changed but nothing has changed either. He’s exactly where he’s supposed to be, now when the storm is upon them.

“What now, sir?” he asks, aiming for his business voice and probably missing by a mile.

“Not _sir_ anymore,” Mallory answers, and his eyes are soft as Tanner strokes over the curve of his cheekbone. Tanner pauses, caught off-kilter somewhere between his boundless professionalism and knowing exactly what Mallory wants.

“Okay, Gareth,” he says. “What now?” The familiar syllables taste like a revelation in his mouth, and the way Gareth's eyes spark lays out the future in perfect cut glass before him.

“Find Bond.” An impossible little smile, sharp enough to cut, flickers over Gareth’s lips and Tanner smiles right back, feels it stretch his mouth and remembers, as if he’d ever managed to forget, that a double-oh might be a bomb but M-branch is poison, inexorable and insidious and just as dangerous and if they were on the wrong side the world would burn.

It might burn anyway. He knows well as anything that they might not come back from this, and where the world will land if they fail. But this is how they’re going to save Six; not for them but for Queen and country, just like always. Gareth isn’t going down without a fight and he’ll follow wherever he leads. 

“We may be fated to fade,” he says, echoing Gareth’s speech, “but not like this.”

“Together, or not at all,” Gareth answers, and this is like nothing they’ve done before. Their work-life separation is bulletproof because their work is their lives and their lives are each other, and they’re always either Mallory and Tanner or Gareth and Bill but now they’re somewhere in between. 

“I’ll follow you,” he says. “You'll always be my M.” And it’s the closest thing he’s gotten to _I love you_ while within the walls of Vauxhall Cross but he still manages to be surprised when Gareth kisses him. There’s desperation in the way his mouth moves, the curl of his fingers into Tanner’s shoulders, and Tanner slides his palm up over his cheek and lets the tide pull him under. And oh, but maybe it’s a little bit for them too. Maybe they’re allowed to be selfish if it happens like this.

“We should go,” Gareth says when he finally pulls away, looking like he wants to say anything but. “We don’t have much time.” Tanner pushes to his feet, and when he offers Gareth a hand, the palm that lands in his is cold and steady and holds his tight.

Gareth brushes his hair back and straightens his suit as Tanner moves to grab their overcoats off the rack, and by the time he gets back he barely looks like he’s just been having a breakdown in his office. It’s half-involuntary the sound that Tanner coughs out, somewhere between an exhale and a laugh, and Gareth raises a questioning eyebrow.

“What?” he asks. Tanner shakes his head, stepping in close to straighten his collar.

“Nothing. You look perfect.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Gareth’s hands come up before he can finish tugging his tie straight, settling gently over his and leading him in unravelling the knot he himself had tied not an hour earlier.

“What are you doing?” Tanner asks as the silk slips free, catching it before it can slide through his fingers and rolling it neatly into a spiral, mostly to have something to do with his hands.

“Well, I’m not head of Six anymore,” Gareth says, slipping free the top button of his shirt and ducking behind the desk to fiddle with something in the drawers. “Don’t have to dress like it either.”

He straightens up with a shoulder holster in his hand, exchanging it efficiently with his waistcoat and even though he clearly knows what he’s doing he easily relinquishes it to Tanner’s hands, letting him buckle it snug around the curve of his arm, lingering for long moments over the edges of the well-worn fabric where it covers his blue dress shirt.

When he finally lets go, Gareth rolls his shoulders to test the fit and then turns for Tanner to offer him the revolver from the top desk drawer, grip first with the metal of the barrel cold against his skin. Gareth checks the clip and the safety, tucks an extra magazine into his pocket and slides into a neat firing stance, gun levelled straight out across the desk. For a single wild second Tanner thinks he’s going to fire a shot, dirty up the office so Denbigh doesn’t get to sit in it without remembering what he’d done to get there. For one more, he wishes he would do it.

And then the moment passes, and Gareth is bringing the gun down and around, tucking it away into the holster and giving Tanner a look - and he’s there dressed down in shirtsleeves and braces and Tanner just has to touch, wavering close to drape his coat around his shoulders and smoothing his palms down over the lapels. Gareth catches his chin before he can step away, tipping his head up and he’s looking at Tanner like he’s something precious, and it makes Tanner ache somewhere deep under his ribs. He’s always orbited around Gareth's star, cast in the length of his shadow and the simple fact that he gets to have this still shocks him some days.

“Thank you,” Gareth says, quiet and almost reverent, and the depths of his blue eyes are somewhere Tanner would gladly drown. In lieu of a response he presses up onto his toes, and Gareth meets him halfway and it’s the sort of kiss that feels like home, like mulled wine and a crackling fire and Gareth’s favourite cashmere sweater soft against his cheek.

“Come on,” Tanner says as Gareth pulls away, tugging his rumpled collar back into place. “Let’s go save the world.” And it’s stupid to be smiling at a time like this but Gareth is smiling back and this is what they’re going to carry. For Queen and country, and for each other.

Gareth Mallory steps over the threshold of M’s office, cold and resolute with a gun under his jacket and his head held high, and Bill Tanner falls in at his side, M’s shadow until the end. They’ll be the jetty in the path of the storm, the last line of defense, and all that’s left to do is to hold on.

**Author's Note:**

> the office chair thing is probably not canon but it's for the symbolic value. comments and kudos would make my day <3


End file.
